T he boarding procedure has barely started at Chicago O’Hare, and Ben Schlappig has already taken over the first-class cabin. Inside Cathay Pacific Flight 807 bound for Hong Kong, he’s passing out a couple of hundred dollars’ worth of designer chocolates to a small swarm of giggling flight…

Roger Taylor, John Deacon, Freddie Mercury and Brian May In 1980, ‘The Game’ became Queen’s biggest hit album in America, yet the record’s success ushered in a dramatic fall in popularity If you were living in New York City in 1980 and listening to the urban radio station WBLS-FM, there was a good…

On June 26, 2008, our friend Michael Seibel introduced us to 7 prominent investors in Silicon Valley. We were attempting to raise $150,000 at a $1.5M valuation. That means for $150,000 you could have bought 10% of Airbnb. Below you will see 5 rejections. The other 2 did not reply. The investors that…

1. Work with Amazing People Don’t compromise on who you choose to found your company with and hire. Do not put up with ego-centric personalities or downer attitudes. 2. Take on Big Challenges It’s pretty simple: Hard things are valuable; easy things are not so valuable. Reaching the mountaintop is…

Jo�o Fazenda A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15 years…

A Maron-Obama selfie. Marc Maron Friday morning, Marc Maron—whose WTF podcast has featured some of the most raw and riveting interviews with comedians of all time—interviewed President Obama. This was not something Maron had ever expected to do. And yet, months ago, Obama’s people reached out to…

John Waters gave a spectacular 2015 RISD graduation speech on creative rebellion and the artist’s task to cause constructive chaos. Find annotated highlights transcribed over on Brain Pickings .

So today I finished excerpting my entire book Dear Hannah on Medium . After 3 months and 82 posts — 8 of which did well on social media — I can say I’m very happy with the results. Below I describe what I liked about using Medium, how I got the most out of it, and some thoughts on how it can fit…

What makes the world’s top CEOs so successful, rich and successful? This question is on the minds of every hungry entrepreneur in the world, including Bob Johnson, CEO of Slackeyhub. “If I knew what makes these men (and women) tick, I feel like it would give me the edge I need to really take over…

(Photo by mike ) That moment when you realize you’re a little creepy. I’m giving a talk tonight to 150 people in Hoboken. I was going to write a different story about August 18, 1994. In Hoboken. But something happened. I took a walk earlier to prepare my talk and I settled into a cafe. I took out…

MEAN bosses could have killed my father. I vividly recall walking into a hospital room outside of Cleveland to see my strong, athletic dad lying with electrodes strapped to his bare chest. What put him there? I believe it was work-related stress. For years he endured two uncivil bosses. Rudeness and…

WE turn to screens for nearly every decision. Where to eat. Where to vacation. Where to eat on vacation. Where to get treatment for the food poisoning you got at that restaurant where you ate on vacation. Where to write a negative review calling out the restaurant that gave you food poisoning and…

This is Part 1 of a four-part series on Elon Musk’s companies. __________ PDF and ebook options: We made a fancy PDF of this post for printing and offline viewing (see a preview here ), and an ebook containing the whole four-part Elon Musk series: ___________ Last month, I got a surprising phone…

Starting a company while planning a wedding while living on the road This month marks the two year anniversary of Rosie and I leaving our jobs — and the 97th week we’ve been living on the road. (That’s nearly 700 days, for those of you counting.) We call ourselves accidental entrepreneurs because we…

A Roundtable Discussion on The Surprising Resurgence of Newsletters I stole this picture from Exact Target. See — they are killing email. No one wants anymore email, right? Inbox Zero, blah blah, 100k emails unread on iOs looks like this, blah blah, remember spam, blah blah, what about Slack, blah…

After the response to this recent LifeHacker piece , I thought I would explain the system I use to take notes, research books and keep track of anecdotes, stories and info I come across in my work. This isn’t the perfect system. It might not work for you. All I can say is that since learning it…

It is often said that we are living in a golden age of comedy, when new varieties of funny sprout from every screen and nightclub stage. We are lucky to be around in the era of Hannibal Buress and Amy Schumer, of “ Jane the Virgin ” and “ black-ish ,” of “ Broad City ” and “ Louie ,” of Amy Poehler…

In soccer-obsessed Brazil, going to a match means a chance to see some of the best players in the world–and face the possibility of getting beaten up or even killed. A state championship in May ended with police firing grenades into a mob of fans who were attacking rivals with sticks and seats torn…

This is not just another read on how to succeed. I should know. I spent years plowing through book after book on success. Illustrations by @MikeBowser The problem was that most of what I read didn’t really apply to a 20-something young professional. These books were written by people who were at the…

Share Tweet Share Send Link “Dan” seems at first to perfectly embody that popular object of scorn these days in San Francisco: the privileged tech worker. He’s a developer-turned-manager at a thriving startup, the type of guy you would expect to see dodging protesters at a Google bus stop or…

There is one common practice among successful entrepreneurs to which many of them attribute their wild success. Most of us barely make time for this activity, but entrepreneurs spend hours doing it. What is it? The simple act of reading. Billionaires and Their Books: Why the Rich Love Reading A huge…

Andrew W.K. Photo by DMP [ Editor’s note: Every week, New York City’s own Andrew W.K. takes your life questions and sets you safely down the right path to a solution, a purpose, or — no surprise here — a party. ] Dear Andrew, Since I was very young, I’ve always wanted to be a successful musician. I…

A single mother of two teenage boys loses her job. Then she loses her car. Then her house. Then she can’t pay her bills. When this happened to Michelle Bergeron a few years ago, it was a slow-motion spiral out of control. Her boys took part-time jobs to help. Then, her friends outside Tampa, Fla. —…

Growing up in suburban Connecticut, my mom was the most together person I knew. She has always been extremely articulate, a feminist, over-prepared and confident, with bright red lipstick and a statement scarf. She is 5’11” and a regular wearer of heels. She was an executive at a huge corporation my…

ITV’s Good Morning Britain is encouraging people to upload unfiltered, unedited selfies. Because internet.Photograph: ITV S elfie-esteem might be the worst portmanteau since smartch (smart watch), and it’s definitely worse than phablet (phone and tablet). But selfie-esteem , we are told, is tied to…

By Taffy Brodesser-Akner Read the story of how two teens met and fell in love in the 21st century. It’s a simple story. Well, it was supposed to be a simple story. Log in to Medium and “recommend” this story. Follow Matter on Twitter | Like us on Facebook | Subscribe to our newsletter

Habits & Routines Habits & Routines The Field Notes designer on building a varied (and successful) creative career. 0 If you asked Aaron Draplin how he gets so much done, he’ll pretty much tell you that he doesn’t know any other way. Outsiders can easily attribute the designer’s success to “hard…

THE FUTURE of the Toronto Blue Jays wakes up in a 1978 Volkswagen camper behind the dumpsters at a Wal-Mart and wonders if he has anything to eat. He rummages through a half-empty cooler until he finds a dozen eggs. "I'm not sure about these," he says, removing three from the carton, studying them,…

While most design objects need to shrink to fit onto the screen of your phone, postage stamps do not—nor do clothing labels, matchbooks, or machine badges. With car insignia, there is slight shrinkage; the same with vintage packaging. But a detail that you might have overlooked on an old object…

Mann: Ted, we are both intimately affected by the issues discussed in Cory Doctorow’s book Information Doesn’t Want to Be Free . I was very apprehensive about how to approach it. I thought, “If I’m going to be reading a bunch of suggestions about how I can tweet for couches to sleep on after shows,…

DZHOKHAR TSARNAEV is facing the death penalty or life in prison for the Boston Marathon bombing. But what if, instead, the maximum prison sentence were just 21 years? That was the sentence that Anders Behring Breivik received in 2012 after killing 77 people, most of them teenagers attending a summer…

Some of the best designs never hit our screens Author and designer Golden Krishna believes that we’re quickly becoming a society that’s obsessed with our screens, and that the companies making and marketing apps aren’t doing us any favors. “Our love for the digital interface is out of control,” he…

T echnology, we are told every week or so, is rewiring our sentences. The open structure of text messaging makes periods seem angry , while its quickness turns formalities like an em dash into signs of marriageability (at least to this woman ). But to see man outpace machine, look no further than…

I realized that my digital life was getting too complex, so I turned off chat. Then I removed myself from a bunch of Slacks. I filtered a number of mailing lists into automated folders, muted some conversations in Gmail, and switched from Gmail to mutt to do some basic inbox management. I…

A teenager trying to take a selfie in front of the Queen in Belfast.Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/PA O ur social networks have a banality problem. The cultural premium now placed on recording and broadcasting one’s life and accomplishments means that Facebook timelines are suffused with postings…

THIS STORY BEGINS LAST MONTH... Chris Ritter for BuzzFeed I was sitting on my couch in the living room looking at my photo stream, you know, looking for something to Instagram. That's when I noticed a bunch of pictures I hadn't taken. Like, a lot of them. They were mostly of this man taking selfies…

Imagine your goal is to climb the highest mountain. The problem is you are ina foreign land with no map. You might decide to follow what engineers wouldcall a greedy algorithm: at every step you simply take the one that increasesyour elevation the most. You will likely find that you are soon…

Brand | Social Influence | Blog | Twitter Case Studies | 3 min read Written by Rachel May Quin Feb 17, 2015 3:28:51 PM Love was in the air last weekend for couples all over the world, as Valentine's Day approached. With an estimated 91% of Americans planning to splash the cash on their significant…